When looking back on your high school career, can you say with definite certainty that you want a repeat of this in college? Do you still want to be funny, smart or shy? Does the reputation you gathered in high school reflect your current self? Some may say yes, but others will definitely say no.

College can be the perfect time to reinvent yourself and to become the you that you so desperately want to be. For what is potentially the first time in your life, you are surrounded by the possibility of new relationships. The you that you became known as in high school doesn’t have to be the you that you introduce yourself as now. Let yourself be who you think you should be, not who you feel that you have to be, if that makes any sense. Stop feeling the need to be funny because it feels like everyone is, and if you’re sick of being the quiet, shy one, don’t feel afraid to be loud, energetic and friendly.

While the idea of becoming someone new is almost romantic in a sense, it doesn’t mean you have to. College doesn’t have to be the moment where you become radically different; it could just be the time where you discover the best version of yourself on the transitionary road from childhood to adulthood. Because while we all have more growing up to do, the person that we came to know all through our lives (ourselves) is incapable of completely fading away. Our hopes and our dreams are so central to our identity and just the very act of going to college is acting on them, intertwining them even more with our personality traits.

For me, college really is a mid-youth crisis. The labels and identifiers that I was so bound by in high school have since fallen by the wayside, and I have the world of opportunity to redefine myself with. But, without calling in the issue of self love, I’d like to think that I love the person I was enough to stay true to her. To continue calling myself a dreamer and a lover, even if I no longer call myself an athlete or high schooler.

In the end, you shouldn’t feel the need to live by the person you were in high school or to completely ditch who you’ve been, because college is the perfect time to one hundred percent, authentically and unapologetically, be yourself. Welcome to college, and welcome to your first mid-youth crisis.